A cat animated GIF, that is. A real cat is yet to come.
General
Goldfish don’t bark
And are therefore better than dogs.
There is a dog in my building. It barks. It barks a lot. If it was a goldfish, it would merely blub. And that would be fine.
Bonus social media thoughts: A July 2023 update
I last wrote about social media stuff just a few months ago: Thinking about how I use social media: A sequel of sorts
At the time, I was checking the usual sites irregularly, as I’d switched to a bedtime routine of reading actual books. Since then, irregularly has become rarely. I just haven’t missed Instagram and Facebook, so this has been a kind of unintentional culling.
The reasons for why I haven’t missed them are summed up pretty much in the post linked above: Once I broke the routine of checking in every night, I found the content was just not interesting enough for me to tolerate the endless piles of “reels” and ads. Instead, I have been spending a bit more time on Mastodon, which has no ads (by design) and no algorithm (also by design). I only see what I want to see. I follow people, then unfollow if they don’t make my socks roll up and down. That is my bar now–you must magically animate my socks or off with you.
It’s worked out decently so far.
Part of me does kind of miss posting my photos regularly, but they were only seen by a handful of people anyway, and now I can focus on posting billions of photos to my blog instead! I think in some small way this may have slightly improved my mental health, too (not visiting FB and IG much, not the posting billions of photos to my blog part, though who can say for sure!)
And now kittens:
Everybody have fun tonight
In September of 1986 I turned 25 years old. A song by Wang Chung was also released that month called “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.” At the time, I thought it was pretty dumb. It even had this eye-rolling lyric where the band invokes itself as the personification of fun:
Everybody have fun tonight Everybody Wang Chung tonight
I was a very serious person at age 25.
Today I realize that while this is a confection–a song you dance (and have fun) to, it’s also a brilliantly executed pop gem. The whole thing just moves (or slaps in the hipster parlance of 2023).
The official video is probably not a great choice for people prone to epileptic seizures, but this live version from 1987 not only captures the energy of the recorded song, it demonstrates that Wang Chung was a fantastic live band. And now that I am, ahem, not 25, I can better appreciate what they did.
I suggest we all Wang Chung a little tonight1You don’t need to DRESS like Wang Chung tonight, but if you can pull off 1980s fashion in the 2020s, rock your socks off.
Precipitation! And a minor reflection on Summer 2023
Yes, it is raining today and that is noteworthy, as it has been very dry. It still doesn’t feel as weird or bad as last summer, though wildfires across BC are worse. I remember last summer having a surprising number of 30C+ days, and it was super humid from start to end. This year humidity has been low or normal (possibly due to El Niño) and while it’s been warm, we’re seeing high temperatures that are only may be a degree or higher than the norm. We may have had more 30C+ days in May than in July so far (and the forecast suggests it will stay that way).
Weather is weird. And getting weirder.
Thank you for attending my mini climate change TED Talk.
Another Pervis comic I’m in touch with
(Originally seen on Mastodon.)
Engagement is down. Solution: FREE BEER!
By which I mean this image:
Very slightly more seriously, Jetpack offered me these stats for the past month:
320 visitors
375 views
Sure, it may not seem like a lot, but it’s 100% organic! Just like the ingredients in the imaginary beer I’m offering.
Jetpack shows I’ve barely hit double digits this week, though:
That’s actually better than what the site has done historically, where it’s usually been in the single digits. The only thing I can think is a couple of LLMs are now scraping the site and hoping I don’t sue them like Twitter did.
If none of this makes sense in the future, welcome to the world of 2023.
Haiku to an empty mind
I’m having a challenging time coming up with blog topics today. I looked over my blog topic list and was left completely uninspired. So a haiku:
Haiku to an empty mind I try to think thoughts But my brain says uh uh, no OK I'll just sleep
Serif vs. Sans serif: Fight!
UPDATE: I have turned radical and am now using the serif typeface Bitter for headings. Anarchy!
I’ve been thinking about my blog redesign, as I do periodically, and have read several articles arguing in favour of using serif fonts for body text on websites. The old belief was that text on screen evolved to be mainly sans serif because low resolution screens made serifs harder to read, as they couldn’t be rendered well. Now with fancy™ screen technology and higher resolutions, that’s not a problem, so it’s time to return to serifs for body text, following the lead of virtually all novels and most books in general.
And yet I cannot find a serif I like. They all look too thin or too fat, or too fancy. Part of it is laziness, because the theme I use, the excellent GeneratePress, offers a list of dozens of Google fonts, but it isn’t trivially easy to deviate from the list. And I am lazy, so trivially easy is important. But I will keep poking at it.
For now, I am using Heebo for body text again, because it’s a clean-looking sans serif font, plus the name is adorable.
Also, I’ve tried going through some “best fonts” lists and as you might imagine, a lot of them are SEO-driven junk. But there’s a few out there! I will expand on this post later.
(And yes, I know the difference between a typeface and font, but that battle is long since lost for the pedants.)
My apologies to the internet
Earlier this year, I gave myself permission to post whatever I wanted to this blog–no more filters, no more forbidden topics. If I wanted to say it, I’d say it.
I’ve noticed lately that a lot of what I’ve been writing seems kind of cranky, and I don’t want to come across as a cranky person. I have had a terrible flu bug recently, and am still getting past the last bits of it and this has certainly soured my overall mood, but I just seem to be taking on lots of negative stuff–mostly on the web–then spewing bile here because of it. Some of the targets are pretty easy, admittedly. And I really believe grocery stores are gouging customers and that makes me angry, because food isn’t optional, and it rankles me that these people will get away with it because our federal government is ultimately too spineless to do anything about it.
But see, there I go again! Cranky! Angry!
I will still feel the way I feel, but there’s no need to project it to the Large Language Models scraping this site to help some future 14-yewar-old write their book report.
This is my way of saying I am going to try to focus on more creative, whimsical and/or entertaining stuff to post. And kittens, of course.
But first, a nice shot I took today of Burnaby Lake (it’s there under all the lily pads):
Save (for one whole week) on foods
From the Save On Foods weekly flyer:
Today is July 13. This means Save On Foods is guaranteeing they won’t raise prices on a select number of items for (hold onto your hats) one entire week!
What a truly wondrous offering from our food supplying overlords.
This seems like a good spot for some internet links. These links are good until July 19…and beyond!
DuckDuckGo search on “food store greed”: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=food+store+greed&t=newext&atb=v382-7&ia=web
Some of the results:
Corporate greed at the grocery store is making people go hungry
Inflation: Why Canada grocers are accused of ‘greedflation’ – BBC
Grocery giants are screwing Canadians—and farmers have proof
Prime Day shmime day!
When Amazon started its “Prime Day” deal a few hundred internet years ago, it was obvious what would happen if it became a success:
- Amazon would expand it to be more than just a single day to better milk it. (Done. It’s now spread over two days.)
- Other stores/sites would shamelessly copy it and cleverly call their versions something different (“48-Hour Sales Event”, “Black Friday in July”) but you totally know it’s their version of “Prime Day.” (Done. Two-day sales are everywhere now during Amazon’s event.)
- Amazon would start to make the deals worse because now they have the inertia and know people are going to look and buy, anyway. They’d also start making it harder to get good deals by making them time-limited (even within the two days of the sale) or require you to reserve a spot to qualify to give them your money. (Done and done.)
- Every tech (and many other) sites would report on “Prime Day” as if it were legitimate news. It is not legitimate news. (Done x1 billion.)
- A lot of those same tech (and other sites) would be filled with articles on the “best deals” for the entire two days, crowding out more interesting content. Or just any content. (Done. My favourite punching bag, engadget, has 17 hits for “prime day” on its main page–which actually seems on the low side!) EDIT: Just for fun, The Verge has 10 hits, Ars Technica has 2.
- I would complain about “Prime Day” in a blog post and refuse to write it without surrounding it with quotation marks, implying I’m saying it with sarcasm. (Boy howdy, done!)
Here is an image of a prime cat for your viewing pleasure:
